1870s –1993

When Mary Colclough, writing in the New Zealand Herald in 1871 under her pen-name of 'Polly Plum', suggested that there should be no legal barrier to women rising as high in the world as their talents allowed, her words provoked considerable controversy. [1] Those contributing to the ensuing argument largely overlooked one contemporary field in which male and female already worked on terms of virtual equality. The vigorous and crowded world of colonial entertainment provided numerous opportunities for women of talent and tenacity to earn a living. As professional dancers, actors, or musicians, they could be responsible for their own careers; some rose to become major stars. Many of the touring companies which dominated the Australasian theatrical circuit during the nineteenth century were managed by women, either jointly with their husbands or on their own account. Social convention led many women to abandon promising careers when they married, but a considerable number successfully combined marriage and child-rearing with busy professional lives. The audiences which crowded nightly into the newly built theatres of New Zealand's growing towns were presented with countless examples of women as high achievers in their own right.

The status of women in the professional performing arts at that time varied considerably. While the members of a dance troupe on the West Coast goldfields were likely to be shunned by the so-called 'better classes', there was little stigma attached to being a musician. Leading singers and instrumentalists were welcome in the most elevated circles. The social acceptability of the performing arts increased as the century proceeded. By the 1870s theatres were places of family entertainment, patronised with enthusiasm by a wide cross-section of society. New Zealand newspapers carried a great deal of theatrical news: the exploits of New Zealand-bred actresses such as Rosa Towers and Marion Dunn were well known, and the 1878 tour by the Tasmanian-born soprano Amy Sherwin created a fever of colonial pride. By the 1890s the performing arts had attained a level of respectability which made them a viable escape-route from domestic dependency for many young women.

The vitality of the professional scene was complemented by an equally vigorous tradition based in the home, where instrumental solos and ensembles were performed, ballads sung, recitations given and private theatricals staged. Amateur cultivation of the performing arts was a corner-stone of social life in Victorian and Edwardian New Zealand. Its most visible manifestation was the dance. Apart from providing valuable opportunities for interaction between the sexes, dances and balls were used to celebrate special occasions. Women were frequently involved in organising such events, and played an important role in maintaining the tradition of dance as a desirable social accomplishment. Teachers of dancing soon appeared in all the major settlements. However, they were greatly outnumbered by teachers of music, the majority of whom were women. The 1886 census showed 127 male and 370 female music teachers resident in the colony. By 1916 this had increased to 258 male and 1266 female. Music was undoubtedly the most valued and practised of all the performing arts. Settlers were encouraged to bring musical instruments with them, and the ubiquitous piano became the centre-piece of many a colonial parlour. Toward the turn of the century, when the 'musical evening' took on semi-ritual status in wealthier households, facility in music still remained a most desirable accomplishment at all levels of society.

Voluntary performing arts societies were established surprisingly early, particularly in the musical field. The first choral society formed in Auckland in 1855; Dunedin followed in 1856, Wellington and Christchurch in 1860. All included women from the outset. By 1864 Dunedin's major choir, the Philharmonic Society, comprised 21 women and 24 men, and more women were being actively sought for the contralto section. The susceptibilities of the lady members were zealously guarded by their male colleagues: when the society's first conductor, G. R. West, discarded his coat at a rehearsal and conducted in his shirt-sleeves, the men were so outraged at his failure to consider the feelings of the ladies present that they forced him to resign. [2]

Mixed-membership musical, operatic, and theatrical societies soon mush roomed. To the mainly middle class women who joined them, they were valuable outlets for self-expression. They also offered the opportunity to meet like-minded friends of both sexes, and the occasional chance to poke fun at social conventions with home-grown satirical skits on contemporary topics.

Although female participation was essential for the success of these groups, they were predominantly run by men. A similar situation existed with the Māori concert parties, which became numerous by the 1900s. The Rotorua Māori Choir was exceptional in having a woman, Mākereti (Maggie) Papakura, as its co-founder and director. Amateur all-male choirs known as Liedertafels also existed in many centres. An all-female equivalent, the Liederkranzchen, flourished briefly in Christchurch during the 1890s, but seems to have had no imitators. Women appear to have shown little interest in setting up separate choral or theatrical organisations at that time.

Canterbury Museum, Clifford collection, 1980.175.1

Women’s banjo band, c.1913, with male conductor.

The only area in which a significant number of all-female performing arts groups developed before the 1920s was that of instrumental ensemble music. In Britain, where male players feared for their jobs, women were excluded from bands and were not permitted to work in professional orchestras until 1913. In New Zealand, where a professional tradition hardly existed and there was a chronic shortage of capable instrumentalists, prejudice was tempered by necessity. A photograph of the Auckland Choral Society's orchestra in 1884, for example, shows five female and 32 male players. [3]

Nevertheless, women instrumentalists faced an undercurrent of male disapproval, to which they responded by setting up ensembles of their own. An amateur Dunedin Ladies' Orchestra advertised concerts in early 1883; similar groups sprang up all over the country. Wind and brass instruments appeared to complement the more readily available strings: in 1894 the sixteen-member Hawera Ladies' Orchestra included a cornet and trombone. A photograph of the Temperance Ladies' Brass Band, probably dating from the early 1900s, showed that even this most staunchly male bastion of instrumental music could be breached by those with a strong enough cause to espouse. [4]

Some women's orchestras were very large. Forty players took the stage for an 1893 concert by the Auckland Young Ladies' Orchestral Society, while another Auckland ensemble, Mrs Jackson's Ladies' Orchestra, had 50 members in 1897—including five small boys and five men. A blurring of boundaries between voluntary and professional characterised some of these groups. When the Royal Albert Ladies' Orchestra supplied 'appropriate orchestral accompaniments' to Auckland cinematic presentations of King Edward's funeral in 1910, it pioneered a new avenue of employment for women. [5]

However, the advent of moving pictures was ultimately to have a devastating effect on live entertainment in New Zealand. Touring companies, already handicapped by high transport costs and an inadequate population, could not compete with their cheapness and constant novelty, and they soon supplanted live theatre as the preferred medium of mass entertainment. Although many women obtained jobs in cinema orchestras, these quickly vanished after talking pictures arrived in 1927. Radio offered some performing opportunities, usually part-time, from the 1930s, but nothing replaced the employment lost as the Australasian entertainment circuit contracted. From about 1910 onwards, many women who previously might have become professional performers were restricted to amateur activities.

The loss of young men in World War I propelled women to the forefront of performing arts organisations. They maintained a high profile in the New Zealand Society of Professional Teachers of Music (founded 1924) and were equally prominent in the new repertory societies which grew up during the 1920s. 'It is no exaggeration to say that the future of the amateur dramatic movement is in their hands', observed a columnist in 1939. [6] A feature of the inter-war years was the vital role played by women as producers, directors and organisers of mixed membership societies covering a broad spectrum of dramatic and musical activities. Also striking was the emergence of a few all-women performing arts clubs, which had both participatory and educative aims. Typical of these was the Society of Women Musicians of Otago.

Canterbury Museum, 19XX.2.3164

Women members of a pierrot troupe, c. 1920s. Many young women of the time found a social and creative outlet in amateur pantomime and song-and-dance groups.

Another important development during this period was the setting up of sub-groups devoted to dance, drama and music within women's organisations such as the Catholic Women's League, the Plunket Mothers' Clubs, the Lyceum Clubs and the Women's Institutes. This continued a trend begun during World War I, when women's groups staged concerts and pageants for fundraising purposes. The supportive context of these broadly based organisations encouraged women who would never have dreamed of joining repertory, or other specialist societies, to take part in the performing arts. In an age when women were expected to stay home after marriage, such activities built confidence and provided a valuable creative outlet as well as a source of companionship.

Nelson Provincial Museum, Ellis Dudgeon Collection, 189025

Performance by members of the drama circle of the Nelson Townswomen’s guild, 1941.

Commitment to the performing arts within general women's organisations inevitably flagged during World War II, as members turned their energies to war work; but it revived in the early post-war period, with many groups reaching their zenith during the 1950s. In 1952, for example, the Tauranga Lyceum Club had a 40-strong musical circle and a 26-member dramatic circle. The two combined that year to present a 'Cranford' evening of dramatised readings from Mrs Gaskell's novel, with a programme of suitably 'period' music. Performed in both Tauranga and Te Puke, it was a major event in the local arts calendar.

In general, however, developments in the performing arts increasingly left such groups behind as the isolationism of the inter-war period was swept away. New ideas and techniques, principally from Europe, flooded into New Zealand, and indigenous professional ensembles were gradually established, beginning with the National Orchestra (now the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra) in 1946. Women were involved in these from the outset. Nevertheless, the role of non-specialist voluntary women's organisations in nurturing latent talent and widening the appreciation base for the performing arts should not be underestimated. [7]

A noticeable trend after 1945 was the emergence of dance from the teaching studio and ballroom. The founding of such disparate organisations as the New Dance Group, the Mendl Creative Dance Society, and the Academy of National Dancing exemplified the post-war upsurge of interest in this form. The New Dance Group was begun in 1946 by Rona Bailey, Edith Sipos, and Olive and Philip Smithells (as non-dancing director). It lasted only until 1947, but is important as the first New Zealand group devoted to contemporary dance. The Mendl Creative Dance Society grew out of the work of Austrian-born Lucie Mendl Stonnell, who came to New Zealand as the wife of a Taranaki farmer in the 1930s. By blending a variety of European influences with the concept of disciplined self-expression through dance, she created a unique form that was still flourishing in 1993. Educative in the broadest sense, the Mendl movement was of particular value for the way it encouraged mothers and older women to enjoy their bodies through creative dance. [8]

The Academy of National Dancing was set up in 1946 by the Piping and Dancing Association of New Zealand. Its brief was to raise and set standards for the teaching and judging of competitive highland dance in this country. May Thorn and Fassie McDougall, both of whom had been successful competitive dancers, took a major role in founding the organisation, and it was largely run by women from then on. The academy produced booklets explaining standard techniques, set up technical grade examinations, and ran courses on behalf of the members of Caledonian societies throughout New Zealand.

These groups, and many others that developed in this diverse field, shared two characteristics. First, in common with most organisations in the underfunded, underpaid world of the performing arts, they existed in a grey area where voluntary and professional overlapped. Secondly, most did not set out to be for women only. The dearth of interested men tended to turn them into women's organisations. They provided an interesting contrast to the post-war establishment of all-women pipe and brass bands. These were a deliberate reaction to the continuing exclusion of women from a major New Zealand sphere of music-making.

Hocken Collections, University of Otago, MS-4731/002/001

Dunedin Ladies' Brass Band performing in Rugby Park, Invercargill, during the late 1940s or 1950s. The band made 190 public appearances during its first five years (1940—45) and played at each local Anzac Day dawn service, 1942-57. In 1947, a second women's brass band, Auckland's Te Akarana Girls' Band, joined the Dunedin women at the annual national band competitions.

The band movement, perhaps because of its military origins, had always proved resistant to the idea of female membership. A turning point came with the founding of the Dunedin Ladies' Brass Band in 1940. Although not the first all-women band, it quickly surpassed its predecessors in standard. One of its members, Beverley Burt, won the baritone horn solo at the National Brass Band Championships in 1950, causing ripples of surprise; then in 1958, the ensemble became the first women's brass band to win a contest within the British band tradition, and male resistance was effectively routed. Although chauvinism still existed into the 1990s, women instrumentalists were by then playing alongside their male colleagues in brass bands throughout the country, and could also be found in military bands such as that of the RNZAF.

A number of women's pipe bands, notably the Dunedin Ladies' Scottish (1947) and the Auckland Ladies' Highland (incorporated 1949), also emerged in the immediate post-war period. The struggle to establish open membership within this movement proved very protracted. When Claire Eeles and Robyn Oade joined the Macleay Duff Distillery Pipe Band in 1984, to become the first New Zealand women to pipe competitively at top A grade level, several existing members resigned, protesting that a pipe band was 'not a place for girls'. [9]

That even this battle was successfully fought owed much to the heightened awareness created by the emergence in the 1970s of the women's liberation movement, which had an enormous impact on the performing arts. Drama by, for and about women, and reflecting feminist themes, was quickly recognised as a valuable way of putting political and social points across. In 1975, the Dunedin Collective for Woman's group, the Cure-All-Ills All Star Travelling Women's Medicine Show, toured the country with a hard-hitting, satirical entertainment which explored topics of vital concern to women—many of which had been hitherto tacitly excluded from open discussion. In tackling the myths and taboos surrounding such subjects as menstruation, the group made a major contribution to the women's movement. It also became the prototype for many later revue groups.

These tended to be characterised by an energetic style of presentation involving a mixture of dance, drama, and humour. Many groups took theatre onto the streets, catching public attention with colourful masks and costumes. Of particular significance during the 1970s were a pioneering all-lesbian group, the Muses (1977), and the Backstreet Theatre Group (1976), which took a wide-ranging show, emphasising a pro-choice message on abortion, to more than 25 centres from Auckland to Invercargill. A number of lively popular-music ensembles, with a repertoire of work for, by and about women, also emerged during this period. One of the earliest was the New Zealand Women's Stars and Shadows Band, which first performed in March 1976 at the International Women's Day celebrations in Auckland.

In general, the groups of the 1970s were short-lived. The demands of writing, rehearsing, touring and constant fundraising caused rapid burn-out. Most worked as collectives, harnessing the talents of members who had limited experience in the performing arts, but saw them as an effective way of putting across a message. They are therefore more accurately categorised as social and political, rather than performing arts organisations. They did, however, play an important part in creating a receptive climate for later, more professional feminist work in dance, drama and music.

A growing appreciation of the contribution made by women to the performing arts became slowly apparent during the 1980s. It was encouraged by major events such as the Feminist Arts Festival, held at the University of Auckland in June 1982. That same year, the influential feminist magazine Broadsheet mounted its first touring theatrical revue, 'What did you do in the War, Mummy?', written by Renée. Of vital importance was the founding of a Women's Caucus within the Wellington branch of Actors' Equity in 1984, and a sister group in Auckland the following year. By demanding equal opportunities for women in all aspects of professional theatre, these caucuses gave added impetus to the flowering of women's drama during the 1980s. Several notable women playwrights, such as Renée, emerged, and there were professional productions of a number of plays centred on women's experiences, achievements, and concerns.

The progress made in women's music over the late 1980s and early 1990s could be clearly seen in the emergence of groups such as Black Katz, or Moana and the Moa Hunters, where the musical quality matched the message, and in the prominent place occupied within the overall context of New Zealand music by major talents such as song writer Māhinarangi Tocker, solo artist Jan Hellriegel, and the Topp Twins. In the classical music field it was exemplified not only by the large number of women in New Zealand's professional orchestras, and their presence as managers of certain performing arts organisations, but in the fact that New Zealand's two operatic 'Dames', Kiri Te Kanawa and Malvina Major, became its most instantly recognisable cultural figures.

Up to 1993, the development of women's organisations within the performing arts followed a different pattern from those in other fields. The existence of a well-established professional tradition in the nineteenth century, and the fact that the majority of performing arts required female participation, conditioned the extent to which women needed to set up their own groups. Areas of total exclusion were few. The struggle was for equality of input to be matched by equality in status, decision-making and opportunity. By the early 1990s enormous progress seemed to have been made, yet women remained under-represented in technical and managerial spheres, and in choral and orchestral conducting. In some areas it was debatable just how far they had advanced since the halcyon days of the 1870s.

Adrienne Simpson

1994-2018

Over the 25 years since 1993, the success of New Zealand women in the performing arts both nationally and internationally made it clear that there was no shortage of talent, creativity, skill and determination among those identifying as female in Aotearoa. From award-winning performers, musicians, writers, directors, choreographers and designers to sector leaders whose vision and drive ensured that major organisations, performance companies, events and festivals not only survived but thrived, women played a major part in our performing arts.

A number of organisations focussed on women in theatre and on screen were created in the 1990s, and continued to operate into the 2000s. These included Women in Film and Television (WIFT), which started in Wellington in 1993, followed by an Auckland chapter in 1995 and a Christchurch chapter in 1996. In 2009 the regional chapters merged to become WIFT NZ. Part of an international network, WIFT NZ provided education and professional development opportunities for its 14,000 strong membership working in film, television and associated industries. It offered workshops, events and a mentoring programme as well as support services. From 2011, WIFT recognised and supported the achievements of Māori women in film and television through the annual Mana Wāhine Award.

The Women’s Play Press collective was launched in 1994 by a group of female playwrights whose plays had been performed in a 1993 festival celebrating the centenary of women's suffrage in New Zealand. Several of their publications sold well and achieved national and international productions, as well as inclusion in school and university curricula. In 2003 an article in Playmarket News, the quarterly publication of the New Zealand playwrights’ agency, noted that at that time women and Māori playwrights were better served than others in terms of getting published, thanks to the efforts of The Women’s Play Press and Huia publishers. Bloomsbury Women and the Wild Colonial Girl, by Lorae Parry, was produced in 2010 by The Women’s Play Press, in association with its offshoot The Play Press, and again in 2018, in connection with celebrations to mark Katherine Mansfield’s 130th birthday. From 2007, The Women’s Play Press acted as a source organisation for submissions to the annual Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an international monetary prize for women writers of works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre.

The discovery of a book on experimental women’s theatre at the Wellington Central Library led Sally Rodwell and her collaborator Madeline McNamara to take their work Crow Station to the 1994 Magdalena Project festival in Wales. As a result of this experience, they founded Magdalena Aotearoa in 1997 to encourage and promote the work of women in the performing arts locally. In 1999 Magdalena Aotearoa hosted its own International Festival of Women’s Performance in Wellington city and Paekakariki. In 2018 its small group of trustees continued to facilitate connections, conversations, and events through their Facebook page and website.

In the twenty-first century, international movements highlighting sexual violence, such as Me Too (also known as #metoo) and Time’s Up, involved high profile women from the screen industry speaking up, with #metoo becoming a worldwide phenomenon on social media in October 2017. This led to an intense focus on women’s experiences of sexual violence and inequality in professional contexts. In New Zealand the Screen Women’s Action Guild (SWAG) was formed with the aim of changing the local screen industry culture. SWAG held two forums in March 2018 on the subject of women’s safety in the screen industry, and went on to publish draft recommendations for positive change. Systemic inequality for women in film and television had already been acknowledged by two of the sector’s government funded agencies. In 2015 the New Zealand Film Commission released its gender policy, which included a 50% participation rate target for women filmmakers across its professional development opportunities. Other initiatives included introducing a scholarship for female filmmakers, and publishing gender statistics based on the Commission’s funding information. In 2016 New Zealand On Air responded to international research on ethnic and gender disparity in the sector by publishing their first Diversity Report.

Sexism in the music industry led a group of New Zealand musicians to form Women About Sound, which held its first meeting in March 2017, followed by an ongoing series of workshops aimed at encouraging the ‘development of a thriving diverse music scene for women in New Zealand’. [10] Women About Sound was clear that it welcomed all women including trans-women, echoing initiatives such as Equalise My Vocals. Fronted by multi-disciplinary maker and performer Coco Solid, Equalise My Vocals consisted of a series of online interviews and a two-day ‘music and discussion’ event in May 2017 focussed on gender equality in music for women, transgender and non-binary people: “Equalise My Vocals was a project about everyone being treated fairly within all factions of New Zealand music. That’s it.’ [11]

The year 2017 set a record for female representation in the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards (VNZMA) and the Silver Scrolls, but overall VNZMA nominations over the previous decade showed an underrepresentation of women. They also showed that women were more likely to find success as solo acts than as part of a group, and as performers and writers rather than as producers or engineers. The first Girls Rock! Camp Aotearoa was held in January 2018; it followed the example of international Girls Rock! Camps in providing an opportunity for female, transgender, intersex and non-binary youth aged 12 to 17 to form bands, learn instruments, attend workshops and write an original song, in a supportive environment with experienced mentors. The bands performed their songs to friends and family at a concert at the end of the camp. The aim was to give young women a broad range of experience in making music and encourage them to develop musical networks from an early age, in the hope that this would give them the confidence to pursue any area of music that interested them.

In contrast, a sector of the performing arts where females continued to predominate strongly in both the professional and non-professional realms was dance. From 1990 on women founded a large number of dance companies, including Touch Compass, The New Zealand Dance Company, Footnote New Zealand, Atamira and Le Moana. In hip-hop, Auckland star Parris Goebel became extremely influential after she founded dance studio The Palace in 2009, the home of international powerhouse dance crews such as ReQuest and The Royal Family. Goebel almost single-handedly transformed a male dominated hip-hop scene and empowered women with her ‘Polyswagg’ style, which placed her in demand as a choreographer for the music videos of prominent American stars. Jan Bolwell’s Crows Feet Dance Collective also empowered women through dance. Formed in 2009 for women over the age of 35, by 2018 it had four groups based in Wellington, the Kapiti Coast, Lower Hutt and Palmerston North, consisting of a mix of experienced and beginner dancers who regularly performed original works.

Traditionally women were heavily involved in dance education in New Zealand. From the 1990s they led the way with the establishment of some of the most highly sought-after scholarships, including the Caroline Plummer Fellowship in Community Dance at Otago University, the Tup Lang Choreographic Award managed by Creative New Zealand, and the Eileen May Norris Dance Scholarships awarded through the Public Trust.

From the 1990s, New Zealand’s major arts festivals featured women at the helm in both management and artistic roles. Tributes following the recent death of sector leader Sue Paterson illustrated her huge impact on the performing arts in New Zealand over the past 25 years through her leadership of Limbs Dance Company and the Royal New Zealand Ballet, and as Marketing Director and later Executive Director of the New Zealand Festival in Wellington. However, while women were often ‘behind the scenes’ in roles that utilised strong organisational, financial and relationship management skills, men continued to occupy a greater share of the spotlight. A Playmarket survey of New Zealand plays staged at theatres receiving recurrent funding from Creative New Zealand revealed that between 2011 and 2015, of the 361 professional theatre productions, only 22% were created by New Zealand women writers. As a result of growing disquiet about such statistics, a Hui on Women in Theatre was held at Circa Theatre in Wellington in September 2016, leading to the creation of the 2017 and 2018 Women’s Theatre Festival and a Women in Theatre NZ Facebook group.

Women’s involvement remained strong in the non-professional sphere of the performing arts, through both women-only and mixed gender community choirs and music ensembles, and through community theatre. In 2015 the Society of Women Musicians of Otago celebrated 90 years since its formation in 1925, and continued to give regular public concerts in Dunedin. The first women’s barbershop chorus started in Wairoa in 1981; by 2018 Sweet Adelines New Zealand had 700 members throughout the country in 15 all-women barbershop choruses competing nationally and internationally. Musical Theatre New Zealand, describing itself as the national voice of community theatre, had around 90 member groups from throughout the country in 2018.

The major biennial kapa haka festival Te Matatini became an important event in the performing arts landscape, bringing together teams from around Aotearoa in a celebration of kapa haka excellence, Māori culture and community. Women made up 80% of the audience at Te Matatini 2017; this was typical of the festival’s audience profile. While teams were made up of male and female performers, special awards such as the kaitātaki wahine korowai recognised female leaders in this art form.

In the 2000s the performing arts remained a challenging sector in which to forge a sustainable career in New Zealand, and women continued to face additional barriers, particularly Maori and Pasifika women and those belonging to the LGBTQIA community. The inequality continuing to exist for women in the professional performing arts received renewed attention, with the hope that initiatives and groups created as a result would effect lasting change. For those taking part in the performing arts for their own enjoyment, particularly given the strong sense of community these activities encourage, it was harder to know if the same types of barriers existed; but any change within the professional sector would no doubt have a positive influence for women throughout the performing arts.

Cherie Jacobson

Notes

[1] NZH, 5 August 1871.

[2] Campbell,[ 1945 1, p. 41.

[3] See J.M. Thomson, 1991, p. 116.

[4] Negative G3361/2, Price Collection, ATL.

[5] NZH, 30 June 1910.

[6] Home and Country (magazine of the Women's Institutes), Vol. 12 No. 9, September 1939, p. 14.

[7] For example, feminist playwright Renée gained much of her early experience of the theatre through producing plays for the Greenmeadows branch of the Catholic Women's League.

Nicholls, Roberta, 'Elite Society in Victorian and Edwardian Wellington', in David Hamer and Roberta Nicholls (eds). The Making of Wellington 1800-1914, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 1990, pp. 195-225

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